


Turtles

by greytaliesin



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Minor Violence, Physical Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-24
Updated: 2012-04-24
Packaged: 2017-11-04 06:33:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/390843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greytaliesin/pseuds/greytaliesin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[implied relationships with underage, some physical violence] "When I was a boy they had us fight each other for scraps. Sometimes to the death. The weakest, softest boys, they never got it. They just wasted away. The boldest ones grew fat and lazy." He slides a whetstone down the length of his knife with a light in his hazel eyes. "But me? I was lean with an edge of hunger. The best killers are."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turtles

Snapping turtles flood the river’s edge in Antiva City in the sweltering summers. The river dries up until it's a dredge of mud and sewage and stink and the turtles lounge in the few puddles of dirty water left like gangs of thieves that roam the city, eyeing other turtles harshly and poised to kill like everything else in Antiva City is. 

The clotheslines here could kill an unwary man.

Zevran picks his nails with the edge of his little dirk and waits on one of the bridges, his brown toes dangling just out of reach of the snapping turtles craning their necks and making threatening clicking noises. 

He’s not supposed to be out, but Taliesen rewards him when he’s behaved well with a walk. Zevran knows better than to flee when his bare feet would leave deep tracks in the mud, when the handlers would know just where to find him. They’ve found every other boy who runs, and more than one of them rot beneath the sluggish river’s mud. 

Zevran jumps when a rough hand grabs his shoulder—not Taliesen’s lean brown hands with his one pinkie blackened and shriveled from Fereldan frostbite when he was a boy— a rough grey hand with white hairs on its knuckles.  
“Where’d you get that shining knife, boy?” the man growls over his suede cowl. “A Crow knife, that is. They pay good for their recruits when they disappear.”

Zevran doesn’t react. The man makes the mistake of grabbing him by the loose front of his collar, and not by his neck. A deadly mistake, Taliesen had taught him. Grab a man by his skin and not by his fabric. He’d learned that four summers ago. 

“Wonder how much they’d pay for you, if they think your bones are worth two coppers. What do you think, boy?”

It’s a dance, a forbidden dance, the guildmasters say, steel to flesh and bone to sinew, but Taliesen scoffs at pretty words. “Be clever enough to be faster. It doesn’t matter what your feet are doing,” Taliesen snaps. His handler isn’t stupid enough to defy the guildmasters, but scoffs and jeers that Zevran’s thinking too much of dancing when he pushes him into the mud when he isn’t quick enough, threatens him with scars where no one will see, slices in the tender skin of his underarms and the backs of his knees, and a harsh “again.”

Zevran’s little knife takes two of those grey fingers, and the man shrieks in the road while the snapping turtles swallow them whole. 

\---

"But you didn't kill him?" Taliesen picks dirt from beneath his rough split nails with the sharp end of his stiletto--Zevran learned the habit somewhere, of course; all the handlers do it and he learns from instinct he should do anything the handlers do if he wants to be passed over by the beady eyes of guildmasters. Zevran grins, scuffing one dirty boot in the straw. 

"Was I supposed to?" he mumbles.

"No," Taliesen says gruffly. The bench creaks when the man shifts, runs a hand back through his hair. Zevran learned not to stare at his shriveled black finger a long time ago. "No. Wouldn't want to have to explain it away. You did well. He won't touch a Crow again, once he's learned." He rubs his scruffy goatee. "They're getting bolder."

"I'm getting bolder," the lanky boy says, rubbing his chin. "The last one only lost one finger. This one won't finger a woman again, unless his little finger gets stronger. Maybe there's hope for him yet if he retires in shame to the brothels." He makes a lewd gesture, and Taliesen chuckles.

"Getting bolder. That you are," Taliesen says, flicking a chicken bone at him. Other handlers would boast about their boys. Rinna killed a man on her own a week ago, and her handler couldn't stop talking about it. But the roostmasters aren't impressed. Taliesen says they value tact. Zevran wonders if two fingers count for as much.

It's hot; sweltering, really, and summer evenings over the city stink like rotting meat and sweat and tannin. It's hot, and Taliesen is from a cold place, and his upper lip shines with sweat beneath his stubble and he rubs his whiskery throat just over his gorget--just enough space for the quickest blades to slip. "But. If you were going to kill him, what would you have done?" Zevran peels apart straw and curls up in the corner, with his chin on his scraped bony knee. He hesitates and Taliesen glares--"you're getting stupider but not that stupid; answer. What would you have done?"

"Given him the name of a notoriously sour brothel to put that little finger to use and hope his good finger turns green given a few weeks," Zevran says cheekily--not a mumble this time, but still a deflection. He tests his water when he can and he nearly sees the flash of a grin over Taliesen's thin lips. 

Zevran is sharp, a little bead of blood in his own right. Taliesen doesn't let him off, spearing a grape on the end of his stiletto. "The roostmaster won't like your wit. What would you have done?"

Zevran jabs his finger between his ribs, and Taliesen grunts, taking a swig of wine right from the brown glass bottle with the chip in the neck. "No. Too likely to miss. You'd hit bone. Your knife would glance. He'd bleed but he'd kill you first."

Taliesen stands, and Zevran does his best not to quail. "Not in a fight. Too fast he'll move. You haven't lulled him asleep and lulled him safe." 

In a second his arm shoots out, he yanks Zevran up with a loud cry from the elf and pins him--"ah. See how you guard?" Zevran's lanky arms are over his ribs, pushing out against the taller man. "The neck's what you want. High. Most men try their knife too low, go for the veins, but it's the windpipe you want to cut. Right there, and straight up through the chin." Taliesen grasps his neck and squeezes just so, thumb against the hollow beneath his chin, and Zevran swallows. "A sure knife there and you won't have to wait to see the blood." 

Taliesen smiles--thin and sharp like a blade, and Zevran feels just a prick against his belly--Taliesen's little knife, sharp enough to make him suck in his stomach. "Or here. Never the ribs. It won't always be easy. You won't always be able to lull them sleepy and sated. Men won't trust you--and you must be quicker."

Zevran swallows again, and when Taliesen lets go he scuffs his swollen knuckles under his chin, the hollow of his jaw just at his throat. 

"What did you do with the fingers?" his handler asks, flopping back in the chair.

"Snapping turtles got them," Zevran answers. 

Taliesen laughs, slapping his belly, and Zevran allows a lean grin.

\---

He wonders which one of the turtles got the fingers the next time he stuffs his bony hands through the iron rails, careful not to touch the metal in the blistering, sticky heat of midday. The turtles cluster beneath the shadow cast by the bridge and fight to the death when they aren't too lethargic to half-bury themselves in the sewage and shuffle after the shadow when the sun shifts. 

Two dirty little boys make a game of taunting the turtles and throwing stones, jabbing them with their fingers until one boy isn't quick enough and squeals like a pig when it gets his finger. Zevran grins ear to ear while he shrieks and wails and cries like a baby, blood running down his arm. 

He tells Taliesen about it later. "I think it bit his finger off. It must have been the same turtle. One with a taste for manflesh." He grins at the innuendo, waggling his eyebrows--he should be charming, charming and disarming all at once, Taliesen says, and he's seen his handler slip into a jolly persona just as easy as any assassin tries on a hood. Taliesen sucks his tongue to an eyetooth and tells him gruffly he should eat while he's got the time, arms folded. Zevran ducks his head over thin porridge that's too cold, slurping. 

"Eat, instead of talking. It'll get cold," Taliesen grunts.

"It's already cold."

He knows Taliesen isn't so old as he looks--once when Zevran was feeling brave and they'd given him brandy and a hard slap to stop him wailing about his cuts and bruises the wiry elf had guessed beneath Taliesen's wiry, patchy beard he probably had a handsome young jaw. 

"Cold or not, on the bright side of things, at least they feed you," Taliesen says, peeling back hangnails. "When I was a boy they had us fight each other for scraps. Sometimes to the death. The weakest, softest boys, they never got it. They just wasted away. The boldest ones grew fat and lazy."

"You were fat and lazy?" 

"No," Taliesen says, sliding a whetstone down the length of his knife with a light in his hazel eyes. "I was lean with an edge of hunger. The best killers are." Taliesen thunks his boots on the table, comfortable in his spindly chair, idly sharpening his knife even though Zevran knows that blade is never dull. "It's how you should stay. Keeps you from growing arrogant and complacent." Taliesen smacks the bowl Zevran drinks out of and the young elf swears when his breakfast sloshes down his front, making an angry little noise that's ruined by his voice cracking as he shoves at the handler. His boots scrape against the dirt floor.

Taliesen slaps him--and it stings, and Taliesen shoves him and Zevran stumbles against the wall, the scent of chewing tobacco rolling over him when Taliesen leans close. "And you. You're haughty and scrawny. If you were wise you'd learn to never expect your next meal. You'd learn to eat the flesh of snapping turtles and drink blood if you want to stay afloat. You're not a person to them. Not even one worth so little as an elf." 

He slaps Zevran again and the elf squirms and struggles and blinks tears, his cheek burning. "You've been a fool lately," Taliesen spits between his teeth, grasping him tightly by the chin. "You don't think the roostmasters have noticed? You don't think they've shown blades to me or paid off guards that saw you take a man's fingers? You think they enjoy shelling more coin out to protect you, a scrawny thing they don't care about? They spend a lot of gold in this city, but they keep every shred of it they can like damned dragons, boy. They don't want to see it wasted on you."

He leans closer, his eyes bright and angry--"They don't care a whit about you. Or about me. You're an asset to them. One that can be replaced with little more than a sigh of annoyance. And you forget that all too often. You don't think any of those other boys could touch you. And you don't think a whit about the girls, either, and any of them would take your balls and your tongue to the roostmaster if they were asked, for the chance to get a lick at her boots. You keep up like you have, cutting fingers off and boasting, running down to the river when you should stay close to keep us both from feeling blades, you're nothing but a liability. You're not talented enough for them to keep you, you know too much for them to let you go."

Zevran swallows, and he flinches when Taliesen nearly slaps him a third time, shrinking back instinctively. A long second of silence passes between them. 

"Do you understand what I'm telling you?" Taliesen finally says, in a voice like a tomb, and Zevran nods, sucking in his running nose and thumbing at where his lip stings, though no blood comes off on his brown fingers. The handler sighs through his nostrils, pecks a rough kiss against Zevran's hairline. 

"You're not going out again," Taliesen mumbles. "Climb on the roof if you need air. You're not to leave this building. Understood?"

Zevran mumbles, and Taliesen glares at him. "Yes."

"Keep your head down, Maker's balls," Taliesen huffs shortly. "Keep your head down if you want to survive. You're too much like me, when I was your age. You've seen the scars."

Zevran has; there are long waxy white lines on Taliesen's hairy thighs, just below his knees, on the backs of his ass cheeks so the handlers could mock a disorderly boy when he tried to sit down and tried not to let the pain show. Taliesen had it worse, being a foreigner. 

"Clean that up," Taliesen says gruffly, jerking his chin towards Zevran's spilled porridge. He sheathes his knife and leans close, murmuring against Zevran's temple. "I'll leave a blanket for you in the third seedsack from the left, on the north side of the warehouse. Get it quickly and quietly and put it back before they wake you lot up unless you want a lashing."

Zevran nods. 

"It's the best I can do," Taliesen amends, tugging on his boots and sternly prodding Zevran's collarbone. "Remember what I told you."

That evening Zevran posts himself by the seed sacks in the corner and once the handlers count the boys and kick a few, he turns back the sack to find a blanket wrapped in oilskin, and wedges himself in the damp, shadowy space between two crates, pulling it over his shoulders. 

\---


End file.
